Deconstructing Trumble's Cut & Paste

A critical look at PM Trumble's pro-Israel propaganda piece in The Australian of 22 February, specifically the first 3 paragraphs, yields much of interest for those of us who still harbour a preference for facts over myths and a respect for the historical record.

Trumble kicks off with this sentence:

"Our friendship is as old as the state of Israel itself."

Now compare that with the opening sentence from the second section of former Labor foreign minister Stephen Smith's Australia & Israel speech, delivered on 19 May, 2009:

"Australia's support for the State of Israel goes right back to its creation."

Now consider the next two sentences in Smith's speech:

"Foreign Minister H.V. Evatt, one of my predecessors, played an important role through his Chairmanship of the United Nations International [sic: Special] Commission on Palestine in 1947. Evatt understood the justice of Israel's right to full international citizenship at a time when many still did not."

As a Liberal, of course, Trumble had no use for those two sentences about a former Labor foreign minister (1945-49), whatever services he may have rendered to the Zionist movement in the late 40s. So the Evatt references ended up on the cutting-room floor.

Trumble's next sentence reads:

"Australia was the first country to vote in favour of the 1947 UN partition resolution adopted by the General Assembly, which led to the establishment of Israel in 1948."

Now compare that with Smith's next sentence. As you'll see, both sentences are based on the curious idea that Australia, like some over-the-top, competitive schoolkid with his hand up, screaming Sir! Sir! Sir! to a teacher's question, just couldn't wait to give the Zios a leg up in Palestine:

"When a vote was called that year on General Assembly Resolution 181 to establish separate Jewish and Arab states, the Australian delegate was the first to vote. And the first to vote in favour of the proposal."

(Actually, in Trumble's version, the implication seems to be that the Australian delegate somehow, preternaturally knew he was voting for 'Israel', which was still 6 months away from being declared!)

Smith then proceeds to tell us that Evatt "presided over the historic May 1949 vote admitting Israel as the 59th member of the United Nations."

Again, Evatt has been trimmed from Trumble's piece,

Smith continues:

"Following that vote, Israel's distinguished representative Abba Eban acknowledged the contribution that Evatt and the Australian Government had made to the international recognition of Israel, when he said: 'The manner in which you steered to a vote this second historic Resolution... the warmth and eloquence with which you welcomed Israel into the family of nations, have earned for you the undying gratitude of our people'."

Now here's Trumble's near duplicate version:

"Following the vote, Israeli representative Abba Eban acknowledged Australia's contribution. 'The manner in which you steered to a vote this second historic resolution... the warmth and eloquence with which you welcome Israel into the family of nations, have earned for you the undying gratitude of our people'."

Notice that, in Trumble's version, Eban is portrayed as as praising Australia for "steering to a vote" the 1947 partition resolution (181) of November 1947 (as chair of the UN's Ad hoc Committee on Palestine - and after succumbing to the blandishments of Australian Zionists - he favoured partitioning Palestine over seeking an ICJ advisory opinion), whereas, in fact, he was praising Australia's vote with respect to the May 1949 admission of Israel to UN membership (conditional, BTW, on Israel's implementation of UNGA resolution 194, allowing the return of Palestinian refugees displaced by the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948). The reference to "second historic resolution" (the first referring to the 'partition' resolution) confirms this.

IOW, what we have here is nothing more or less than a cheap cut and paste of an earlier Labor speech, itself probably cribbed from some Zionist propaganda document. Obviously the work of one of Turnbull's minders, it's a perfect example of what is known as 'received wisdom', never examined factoids, endlessly recycled as fact by the mainstream media and junk 'scholarship'.

But it's particularly on this one-sentence third paragraph that I wish to dwell. Because nothing could be further from the truth:

"The key role Australia played in ensuring the security and prosperity of the Jewish people should be a source of pride for us all."

One implication here is that Australia (and, presumably, the other countries which voted for partition in November 1947) was thinking primarily about the fate of Holocaust survivors, many of whom were living at the time in Displaced Persons Camps in Europe. And contrariwise, that those countries which voted against the partition of Palestine were one and all Jew haters.

Now consider the following excerpt from the anti-partition speech of Pakistan's representative, Sir Zafrullah Khan, and note, in particular, his sarcastic reference to Australia:

"What has Palestine done? What is its contribution toward the solution of the humanitarian question as it affects Jewish refugees and displaced persons? Since the end of the First World War, Palestine has taken over 400,000 Jewish immigrants. Since the start of the Jewish persecution in Nazi Germany, Palestine has taken almost 300,000 Jewish refugees. This does not include illegal immigrants who could not be counted.

"One has observed that those who talk of humanitarian principles, and can afford to do most, have done the least at their own expense to alleviate this problem. But they are ready - indeed, they are anxious - to be most generous at the expense of the Arab.

"There have been few periods in history when members of the Jewish race have not been persecuted in one part or another of Europe. When English kings and barons indulged in the pastime of extracting the teeth of Jewish merchants and bankers as a gentle means of persuading them to cooperate in bolstering their feudal economy... Arab Spain provided a shelter, a refuge and a haven for the Jews.

"Today it is said: only the poor persecuted European Jew is without a home. True. And it is further said: why, then, let Arab Palestine provide him, as Arab Spain did, not only with a shelter, a refuge, but also with a State so that he shall rule over the Arab. How generous! How humanitarian!

"The United Nation Special Committee on Palestine, as we know, in recommendation VII, one of the unanimous recommendations, urged that the General Assembly take up this question of refugees and displaced persons immediately, apart from the problem of Palestine, in order to afford relief to the persecuted Jew so that there should be an alleviation of this humanitarian problem and an alleviation of the Palestinian problem.

"What has this great and august body done in that respect? Sub-committee 2 made a recommendation and drew up a draft resolution on that basis (resolution II, document A/AC.14/32). First, let those Jewish refugees and displaced persons who can be repatriated to their own countries be repatriated; secondly, those who cannot be repatriated should be allotted to Member States in accordance with their capacity to receive such refugees; and, thirdly, a committee should be set up to determine quotas for that purpose.

"The resolution is put forward for consideration. Shall they be repatriated to their own countries? Australia says no; Canada says no; the United States says no. This was very encouraging from one point of view. Let these people, after their terrible experiences, even if they are willing to go back, not be asked to go back to their own countries. In this way, one would be more sure that the second proposal would be adopted and that we should all give shelter to these people. Shall they be distributed among the Member States according to the capacity of the latter to receive them? Australia, an overpopulated small country with congested areas, says no, no, no; Canada, equally congested and overpopulated, says no; the United States, a great humanitarian country, a small area, with small resources, says no. That is their contribution to the humanitarian principle. But they state: let them go into Palestine, where there are vast areas, a large economy and no trouble; they can easily be taken in there.

"That is the contribution taken by this august body to the settlement of the humanitarian principle involved." (Sir Zafrullah Khan's speech on the question of Palestine, themuslimtimes.info)

So let us revisit PM Trumble's final paragraph:

"The key role Australia played in ensuring the security and prosperity of the Jewish people should be a source of pride for us all."

If PM Trumble is referring here to Jewish Holocaust survivors in DP camps, most of whom would have gone to the US if given half a chance*, then he's messing with history.

If, on the other hand, he means "the Jewish people" (as in the Balfour Declaration's "a national home for the Jewish people"), that stock standard Zionist ideological construct which supposedly provides the rationale for the Jewish state of Israel, he needs to explain quite why Australians should take "pride" in "ensuring the security and prosperity" of a sectarian, apartheid state founded on the mass dispossession and expulsion of Palestine's indigenous Arab population.

[*See my 4/8/10 post Humanity or Zionism. Just click on the label for Yosef Grodzinsky below.]

No, No, Nadim

I notice that a bloke called Hussain Nadim keeps popping up on the opinion pages of the Sydney Morning Herald. Nadim is of Pakistani origin and is billed as "a doctoral candidate at the University of Sydney and co-ordinator of South Asia Study Group." He is elsewhere touted as an anti-radicalisation expert.

In an opinion piece in yesterday's Herald, Nadim had this to say:

"A few months ago, I had the opportunity to attend a fundraiser hosted by an Islamic organisation in Australia. To my surprise, in a matter of four hours, the organisation raised more than $2 million to build yet another mosque. The organisation's head said at the event he was committed to building a mosque every two miles in Australia. This is just one of the hundreds of Muslim organisations in Australia... For too long, the discourse has been focused on building mosques, instead of universities... Unless the Muslim world and the Muslim communities living in the West re-prioritise and start investing in people and scientific knowledge with their oil wealth or charity, the field will remain wide open for militant-minded individuals to carry the flag of Islam." (Islam needs to invest in people, not mosques, 14/3/16)

If that is indeed what is going on at these fundraisers, I couldn't agree more. Any group prepared to cough up a cool $2m for a mosque, church, synagogue, temple, whatever, every X mile or so, are people who have a priority problem.

But I'm not sure what he's on about with regard to universities. These, like our schools, should all be secular, free and publicly funded, not the recipients of funding by religious or corporate interests. If the organisation Nadim is writing about is Arab, that $2m should go to the victims of Israeli apartheid and genocide. No ifs, buts, or maybes. Moreover, the only mosque which should be at the forefront of any Muslim's mind now and in the foreseeable future is Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is in imminent danger of demolition by Zionist fanatics.

Not that Nadim would know anything about that. After all, he reckons its time for Pakistan to talk to Israel. Seriously. In Time to talk to Israel (The Express Tribune, 22/8/15), he unveils the extent of his 'understanding' of the apartheid state:

"There are better ways to show solidarity with Palestine than refusing to have any diplomatic relations with a country that is as old as ours and has the same rationale for independence."

That sentence alone shows that Nadim knows SFA about Palestinian history, and by implication Pakistani history.

"When even a country like Saudi Arabia, which has historically maintained close backdoor channels with Israel, is pondering over [sic] taking Saudi-Israeli relations to the next level, what then is holding Pakistan back?"

I would have thought that maybe Wahhabi Saudi Arabia exercised enough of a malign influence over Pakistan already, wouldn't you?

"Even if the rationale to boycott Israel has been to offer solidarity to Palestine, the best way to do that would be to recognise Israel, and mount pressure on it to play a part in resolving the crisis."

So Pakistan is going to succeed, where no one before has succeeded, in extricating the Palestinian rabbit from the gut of the Israeli python? Best of luck with that, Hussain.

The Summer of Muslim Discontent 6: Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan

Continuing an Arab Spring update from James Petras' latest (21/9/12) essay...

"Massive and violent protests against the US embassy have taken place in Somalia and Sudan. Washington has been heavily involved, militarily, in Somalia for over 2 decades, moving from an initial failed military occupation to the financing of African military surrogates, including Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. It has also engaged in drone warfare. As a result of this intervention, Somalia is a divided, destroyed and destitute country, where piracy flourishes and three quarters of the population are refugees. The 'film protests' are merely the tip of an ongoing war of national liberation pitting radical Islamists against Western-backed surrogates and the 'moderate' Muslim puppet regime of Sharif Sheik Ahmad.

"Sudan was the site of a massive protest and violent attacks on the US and European embassies. The ruling elite, subjected to US and EU sanctions and a Washington/Tel Aviv-funded armed separatist movement in the oil-rich south, was forced to sign off on an accord which cut its oil revenues by 80%. As a result of its appeasement of the Western-backed separatist surrogate, living standards in Khartoum have plunged, inflation is rife, unemployment is on the rise and the regime has turned its guns from the separatists to its own people. The attacks on the US embassy, therefore, have more to do with the division of the country and its impoverishment than with 'the film' itself. At most the latter served as a trigger igniting a profound frustration with a regime which had once upheld the national integrity of the country but of late has sacrificed its natural wealth to curry favour with Washington.

"Pakistan was the site of mass popular protests in both its urban centres and in its north-western periphery. Embassy attacks and flag-burnings reflected an ongoing and deepening resentment against over a decade of US ground and aerial intrusions, violating Pakistani sovereignty. The drone bombing of dozens of 'tribal villages' has aroused the rage of millions. The US war against Islamic strongholds, its armed intrusion to capture bin Laden and its billion dollar funding of massive Pakistani military sweeps has led to thousands of deaths and millions of refugees. Pakistan is a country seething with anger and deep hostility to anything associated with the US. The film merely fed into this cauldron of growing militant, religious and nationalist discontent. For the convicted felon, pro-US President Asif Ali Zardari, the protests have no credibility whatever: he is simply marking time before he is ousted. 

"Lesser protests against 'the film' took place in Malaysia, Indonesia, Nigeria and elsewhere where the US has been less ubiquitous in its interference in the political and military order.

"The size, scope and violence of the 'film protests' correlate highly with the depth of destruction and destitution brought about by direct US military and political intervention."

Next post in the series: Conclusion...

God's Busy Right Now

"Rabbi David Saperstein, reading from the psalms in English and Hebrew, noticed from the altar that the good men and women of the congregation that day, including the Bidens and other dignitaries, had not yet stood. Finally Bishop Vashti McKenzie of the African Methodist Church asked that everyone rise. At that moment Saperstein saw something from his angle of vision: 'If I had seen it in a movie I would have groaned and said, 'Give me a break. That's so trite'. A beam of morning light shone through the stained-glass windows and illuminated the president-elect's face. Several of the clergy and choir on the altar who also saw it marveled afterward about the presence of the Divine." (The Promise: President Obama, Year One, Jonathan Alter, 2010, p 102)

OK, you may scoff!

Obama may not be God, but he sure knows how to play Him:

"The drafting of the President's kill list begins with a weekly teleconference between more than 100 national security officials, who pore over biographies of suspected terrorists in Yemen and Somalia before recommending targets. Those in Pakistan, where the CIA operates drones, are selected in a separate process and forwarded to the White House. On his own insistence, Mr Obama signs off on every strike, either by the military or CIA, and reserves for himself the ultimate decision on whether or not to give the go-ahead when civilian lives are at risk. That process has often required greater moral and legal trade-off than Mr Obama would have envisioned when he took office - as in the case of Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban leader.

"Mehsud, whose organisation fought the Pakistani government, primarily, did not meet the Obama administration's criteria for targeted killing, as he did not demonstrate an imminent threat to to the US. But Pakistani officials, on whose approval the covert drone program there depended, wanted him dead. Mr Obama and his advisers ultimately decided he could be regarded as a threat; if not to the homeland, then to US personnel in Pakistan - thus qualifying him for killing. In August 2009, Mehsud came into the CIA's sights while visiting his in-laws' home in Pakistan. John Brennan, Mr Obama's counter-terrorism adviser, relayed the message from the CIA that they were in a position to kill Mehsud - but not without collateral damage. Mr Obama told the CIA to take the shot and Mehsud was killed, with his wife and an unknown number of family members." (Obama gives nod for drone killings, Catherine Philp, The Times/The Australian, 31/5/12)

Don't Mention the War Criminal 2

The Australian's obsession with a certain terror state has bubbled up yet again (see my post of 4/3/09) in its March 5 editorial, A medieval quest to reverse modernity. Ostensibly about the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan, the following paragraph gave the game away, literally: "By its nature, this attack demolishes the misguided rationale of the appeasers, generally but not exclusively from the liberal Left, who for the past 20 years have tried to seek out what they claim to be the root causes of terrorism in a futile attempt to achieve a political settlement with terrorists. They seize on economic inequality, real and imagined colonial injustices, or, most often the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. They ignore the fact that in more than a decade of terrorist atrocities leading up to September 11, 2001, including the first World Trade Centre bombing and the attack on the USS Cole, the issue of Israel and the Palestinians featured little in the propaganda of al-Qa'ida and its forerunners."

Al-Qa'ida's Osama bin Laden, of course, begs to differ. The Big O deals with the attack on the USS Cole (12 October 2000) and September 11 2001 in his 2003 sermon Among a Band of Knights. Some excerpts:-

"As I speak, the blood of Muslims continues to be shed in vain in Palestine, Chechnya, Philippines, Kashmir, and Sudan, and our children are dying because of the American sanctions in Iraq."/ "One of the most important objectives of this new Crusader campaign, after dividing up the region, is to prepare it for the establishment of what is called the state of Greater Israel, which would incorporate large parts of Iraq and Egypt within its borders, as well as Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, the whole of Palestine, and a large part of Saudi Arabia. Do you know what harm and suffering greater Israel will bring down upon the region? What is happening to our people in Palestine is just a small example of what they want to repeat in the rest of the region courtesy of the Zionist-American alliance: murder of men, women, and children, incarceration, terrorism, destruction of houses, bulldozing of fields and razing of factories."/ "Then after that, in 1998, the mujahidin were able, by the grace of God, to deal [the Americans] two mighty blows in East Africa. After that America was warned once again and failed to respond so God helped the mujahidin to successfully implement a great martyrdom operation, demolishing the American destroyer USS Cole in Aden... Then when they saw the gang of criminals in the White House misrepresenting the truth, whose idiotic leader claims that we despise their way of life - although the truth that the Pharaoh of the age is hiding is that we strike them because of their injustice towards us in the Islamic world, especially in Palestine and Iraq, and their occupation of Saudi Arabia - the mujahidin decided to overcome this obfuscation and to bring the battle right into their heartland. And on that blessed Tuesday... September 11 2001, the Zionist-American alliance was mowing down our sons and our people in the blessed land of al-Aqsa, at the hands of the Jews but with American planes and tanks, and our sons in Iraq were dying as a result of the oppressive sanctions of America and its agents... Amidst all this... injustice, arrogance, and aggression on the part of the Zionist-American alliance, while 'Uncle Sam' was committing these reckless transgressions and terrible oppression in contempt of everyone, going through the world without paying attention to anyone else and thinking that nothing could attack it, disaster struck it... There came a group of young believers... They sought to be with God, and deprived themselves of sleep while injustice was being done... So they attacked the enemy with their own planes in a brave and beautiful operation, the likes of which humanity has never seen before, destroying the idols of America. They struck at the very heart of the Ministry of Defence, and they hit the American economy right at its heart, too. They rubbed America's nose in the dirt, and wiped its arrogance in the mud. As the twin towers of New York collapsed, something even greater and more enormous collapsed with them: the myth of the great America and the myth of democracy. It became clear to all that America's values are the lowest, and the myth of 'the land of the free' was destroyed, as was the myth of American national security and the CIA... One of the most important positive effects of our attacks on New York and Washington was to expose the reality of the struggle between the Crusaders and the Muslims, and to demonstrate the enormous hostility that the Crusaders feel towards us. The attacks reveal the American world in its true ugliness. The entire world woke up from its slumber... And for the first time, most of the American population is aware of the reality of the Palestinian issue, and that what happened to them in Manhattan was a result of the unjust policies of their government." (Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, edited by Bruce Lawrence, 2005, pp 187-195)

But even when The Australian's singular obsession gives way to good old-fashioned Muslim-bashing, it still can't get things right. Take this, for example, from the same editorial: "Former England batsman Ed Smith was closer to the mark when he wrote in The Times yesterday that Islamic extremists... had singled out cricket for the murderous attack because it is an icon of Westernization." Islamic extremists, eh? Now they don't come more extreme than the Taliban, do they? After all, as the editorial says, "the Taliban's notorious Ministry of Vice & Virtue used football stadiums for public executions... [and] banned kite-flying, barbers, books, radio and chess."

Ah, but did they also ban cricket, that "icon of Westernization"? Well, not according to The Australian's South Asia correspondent Amanda Hodge: "During its years in power, the Taliban... applied - unsuccessfully - for membership of the International Cricket Council. The sport was played in Afghanistan during that time, although with a distinct Talibani flavour." (Islamists wage war against cricket, 'the other religion', 6/3/09)

God, Amanda, now you've done it!

Pure Genius

Insanity: doing the same thing over & over again and expecting different results - Rita Mae Brown

"A Rudd government offer to send Australian counter-insurgency trainers to Pakistan to help rid the country of Taliban extremists had not been raised with the Government in Islamabad and faces a cool response." (This is our war: Pakistan unlikely to accept advisers, The Australian, 31/7/08)